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In Finland, the number and the proportion of women receiving minimum maternity or parental allowance increased dramatically in the 1990s. Their share increased to a high point of 30 percent in 1996 and remained at over 25 percent to the end of the decade. The aim of this study was to describe some of the characteristics typical of these women, and to analyse how often and in what circumstances they had to rely on last-resort income support (social assistance and housing allowance). The material comprises data on the total working-aged population, retrieved from the income security registers maintained by the Social Insurance Institution and from the social assistance register maintained by Stakes (National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health). Both cross sectional and longitudinal data were analysed by means of cross tabulations and means as well as logistic regression. We could differentiate two groups of mothers receiving minimum benefit: young mothers and middle-aged mothers with many children. Twenty percent of women on the minimum allowance also received social assistance and 38 percent received housing allowance. Reliance on social assistance was particularly common among mothers who had delivered their first baby and among young mothers who had delivered more than one baby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]